The erroneous denial of absolute rent—that form in which private landed property realizes itself in capitalist incomes—has led to one important deficiency in Social-Democratic literature and the entire Social-Democratic position on the agrarian question in the Russian revolution. Instead of taking into their own hands the critique of private land ownership, instead of placing this critique on the basis of economic analysis, of the analysis of a definite economic evolution, our Social-Democrats, following Maslov, handed over this critique to the Populists. The result was an egregious theoretical vulgarization of Marxism and a distortion of its propagandistic tasks in the revolution. The critique of private land ownership in Duma speeches, in propagandistic and agitational literature, and so forth, was conducted only from a Populist point of view—that is, from a petty-bourgeois, quasi-socialist point of view. The Marxists were unable to extract the real kernel from this petty-bourgeois ideology, having failed to grasp their task: to introduce the historical element into the examination of the question and to replace the point of view of the petty bourgeoisie—abstract ideas of equality, justice, and the like—with the point of view of the proletariat on the true roots of the struggle against private landed property in developing capitalist society. The Populist thinks that the denial of private land ownership is a denial of capitalism. This is false. The denial of private land ownership is the expression of the demands of the most pure capitalist development itself. And we must revive in the consciousness of Marxists the "forgotten words" of Marx, who criticized private landed property from the point of view of the conditions of capitalist economy.

Marx directed such a critique not only against large but also against small landholding. Free ownership of land by the small peasant is a necessary accompaniment of small-scale agricultural production under certain historical conditions. A. Finn was entirely correct against Maslov in emphasizing this. But such recognition of historical necessity, as proved by experience, does not exclude the obligation of the Marxist to evaluate small landed property in all its aspects. The actual freedom of such property is inconceivable without freedom of buying and selling of land. Private ownership of land means the necessity of expending capital on the purchase of land. On this subject Marx wrote in Volume III of *Capital*: "One of the specific shortcomings of small-scale agriculture wherever it is connected with free ownership of land arises from the fact that the tiller of the soil invests capital in the purchase of land" (III, 2, 342). "The expenditure of capital on the purchase of land diverts this capital from cultivation" (ib.[92], 341){102}.

"The expenditure of monetary capital on the purchase of land is by no means an expenditure of agricultural capital. On the contrary, it signifies a corresponding reduction of that capital which small peasants can have at their disposal in their sphere of production. It reduces proportionately the size of their means of production and therefore narrows the economic basis of reproduction. It subjects the small peasant to usury, since in this sphere genuine credit relations are generally less common. It represents an obstacle to agriculture also when the purchase of large landed estates takes place. It actually contradicts the capitalist mode of production, for which the indebtedness of the landowner is a matter of complete indifference, whether he inherited his plot of land or purchased it" (344–345){103}.

Thus both the mortgaging of land and usury are, so to speak, forms of capital's circumvention of those difficulties which private landed property places in the way of capital's free penetration into agriculture. Without capital, one cannot conduct farming in a society of commodity production. Neither the peasant nor his ideologue—the Populist—can fail to recognize this. It follows that the question comes down to this: can capital circulate in agriculture in a wholly free and direct manner, or only through the mediation of the usurer and credit institution? The thought of the peasant and the Populist—people who partly do not recognize the complete domination of capital in modern society, and who partly pull the wool over their own eyes with illusions and daydreams so as not to see the unpleasant reality—this thought is directed toward monetary assistance from without. "Persons who have received land from the common national fund," states § 15 of the agrarian draft of the 104th, "and who do not have sufficient means to acquire everything necessary for farming, should be provided assistance at the expense of the state in the form of loans and subsidies." Of course, there is no doubt that such monetary assistance would have been necessary when reorganizing Russian agriculture through a victorious peasant revolution. Kautsky in his work *The Agrarian Question in Russia* rightly emphasizes this. But the question for us now is: what is the socio-economic significance—unnoticed by the Populist—of all these "monetary loans and subsidies"? The state can only be a middleman in the transfer of money from capitalists; but the state itself can obtain money only from capitalists. Consequently, even under the best possible organization of state assistance, the domination of capital is not eliminated in the slightest, and the question remains the same: what are the possible forms of the application of capital to agriculture?

And this question inevitably leads to the Marxist critique of private land ownership. This ownership is an obstacle to the free application of capital to land. Either complete freedom of this application—and then the abolition of private land ownership, that is, the nationalization of land. Or the preservation of private landed property—and then the roundabout forms of capital's penetration: the mortgaging of land by landlord and peasant, the enslavement of the peasant by the usurer, the leasing of land to the capitalist tenant farmer.

"In small-scale agriculture," Marx says, "the price of land—this form of private land ownership and the result of such ownership—itself appears as a limitation of production. In large-scale agriculture and in large landed property based on the capitalist mode of operation, property likewise constitutes a limitation, inasmuch as it restricts the farmer in his productive expenditure of capital, which ultimately brings advantage not to him but to the landowner" (346–347, 2. Teil, III. Band, *Das Kapital*){104}.

Consequently, the abolition of private land ownership is the maximum elimination—which is possible only in bourgeois society—of all and every sort of barrier impeding the free application of capital to agriculture and the free transfer of capital from one branch of production to another. Freedom, breadth, and rapidity of capitalist development, complete freedom of class struggle, the elimination of all unnecessary middlemen who make agriculture resemble a "sweated" industry—this is what the nationalization of land under capitalist production means.